1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of communication networks and, in particular, to providing an advertisement to a calling party before providing ringback for the call to the calling party.
2. Statement of the Problem
When a calling party places a call to a called party, the sounds heard by the calling party when waiting for the called party to answer the call is referred to as ringback tones. The communication network over which the call is placed provides the ringback tones to the calling party, which is typically a ringing sound. A present trend of service providers is to offer customized ringback tones to its subscribers. Customized ringback tones may comprise music, songs, sound clips, audio messages, prerecorded greetings, etc, that the communication network plays as ringback tones instead of or in addition to the traditional ringing sound. Customized ringback tones may be associated with specific directory numbers of the calling party, such as with phone lists or exclusion lists. The subscriber can also set conditions for when, for whom, or what is played for the ringback tones based on time, day of the week, the calling party, etc. Customized ringback tones have generated high revenues for services providers.
Emerging multimedia phones (e.g., wireless handsets, broadband wireline phone sets, SIP phones, etc) allow text, animated images, audio/video clips, etc, as multimedia ringback tones to the calling party. The subscriber can define selected images or video clips as multimedia ringback tones and store them in the communication network. If a calling party calls the subscriber, the communication network plays back the selected image or video clip to the calling party based on the multimedia ringback tone profile defined by the subscriber.
A source of revenue generation for service providers is selling advertising targeted to its subscribers. One problem facing service providers is thus how to provide the advertising to the subscribers. One solution is to replace the traditional ringback for a call with a multimedia ringback tone that is an advertisement. Instead of a calling party hearing the traditional ringing sound when calling a business or an individual, the communication network may play a multimedia advertisement to the calling party. Although using the multimedia ringback tone as the advertisement is useful, there may be some limitations. For instance, the advertisement may not be fully played to the calling party if the called party answers the call before the advertisement has been fully played. Thus, it may be desirable to provide advertisements to a calling party in a different manner.